


Only Neighborly

by Anna_Hopkins



Series: October, 2019 [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bad Puns, Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Cohabitation, Domestic Fluff, Humor, M/M, Neighbors, This is the origin of the "Lord knows" pun btw, other people in the discord have since used it and I :redeye:
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-25 18:31:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20916629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna_Hopkins/pseuds/Anna_Hopkins
Summary: Harry returns to the Dursleys' after fifth year just in time to see new neighbors move into the house next door. Or rather, one new neighbor. A very familiar one.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arualiaa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arualiaa/gifts).

> Prompt fill of my own prompt. ♥ Arualiaa has written her own neighborfic based on the same prompt, it's great. Will link when it gets posted.

Of all the things that could have greeted Harry at Number Four, Privet Drive on the summer of his sixth year, moving trucks at the house next door were the last he would have expected.

Petunia and Vernon had muttered about it on the drive back from London -- ignoring Harry's presence, as usual. Apparently, the elderly woman who had so long occupied Number Three had relocated to Majorca with her son's family. This in itself wasn't unexpected, but what had surprised the neighbors was that the new occupant was not the nephew Mrs. Number Three had gone on about selling to at the weekly bridge club. No, the new neighbour was an unfamiliar face, a 'proper businessman' according to the gossip. (Harry couldn't piece together what they meant by that.) He had stopped by to view the house just two days before the end of term.

Landscapers had been called in to review the front and back gardens at Number Three, carrying in several trees and hedges from a well-known nursery out of Wiltshire.

Petunia was determined to outdo Mr. Three's display of obvious wealth (one did not just  _ purchase  _ fully grown trees) by putting Harry to work on the gardens at Number Four. Immediately. Harry was not grateful for it; he would have preferred to work indoors, and thus be able to scavenge from the kitchen. Outside, he would have only water.

It would be pointless to protest, though. He would simply be locked outside and go unfed at all until the work was done.

Predictably, the Dursleys locked his trunk in the cupboard and sent Harry out into the blazing sun within twenty minutes of their arrival with a list of chores. He surveyed the planting beds while he mowed: untended, the agapanthus had grown haphazardly in several directions, and weeds were crowding the ground cover. In short? The yard looked terrible. Harry anticipated at least a week of daily tending just to fix the front garden, never mind the back.

Hours later, when he'd finished preparing dinner, the sound of a car pulling up the drive at Number Three had Petunia out of her seat and at the window, peering through the curtains. "It's him," she hissed, "the new neighbour -- Vernon, you know cars, what  _ is  _ that?"

Grunting with effort, Uncle Vernon got up to look. He whistled, impressed. "That's a '62 Corvette, Pet." Dudley also waddled over to look -- Harry knew from Petunia's chatter on the drive from London that his cousin was now apparently a fan of cars.

"Bloody rich," Vernon muttered, "bringing over American cars. What next, a trophy wife, eh?"

Tempted as Harry was to look, he refrained. He was here for a month; eventually, he would see the new neighbour and his fancy car. Were it not for Petunia's urge toward competitive gardening, Harry might have been pleased that for once he wasn't the one attracting attention in the neighborhood.

The moon rose over Privet Drive, and Harry rediscovered a few things about his bedroom. One, that the bars in the window were still loose from where they'd been ripped out a few years ago (Harry always worried Vernon would find that out and fix them back in place while he was gone). Two, that he could see down into the back garden of Number Three from his window. And three, that the new neighbor must have taken down the curtains of the window most directly opposite Harry's own -- because he could now look right into the house, and had unintentionally gotten an eyeful of the man in his pyjamas, laying out a suit on the back of a chair.

He had to agree with the gossipmongers. Mr. Number Three was, from what he could see,  _ absolutely stunning. _

Harry vowed to keep his own curtains drawn at night, just in case.

The Corvette was still in the drive when Harry woke himself up before dawn to water the plants. He admired the sleek black look of it, clearly freshly waxed and polished -- whitewall tires and shiny chromed accents -- out of the corner of his eye while he tended to the front beds. It really was  _ nice. _

Nice like the neighbour himself, or what Harry saw of him the previous night. Mr. Number Three hadn't worn a shirt; in the oblique light of the streetlamps and the waxing moon overhead, he'd glimpsed a body practically sculpted out of marble, elegant, leanly muscular. Part of Harry's motivations for closing the curtains were to avoid being caught staring. What a first impression  _ that  _ would've been.

So distracted by these thoughts was Harry, that he didn't notice the front door of Number Three opening, or the approach of the neighbor in question. The 'good morning' surprised him into dropping the hose right onto the agapanthus he'd been watering. Harry turned around, eyes wide, and opened his mouth to say hello, until he realized who he was looking at.

Then he stood, gaping like a fish, and not entirely sure what he should do.

Voldemort smirked at him, leaning against the fence with a mug of coffee in hand. "Nice to meet you too, neighbour."

_ "Voldemort," _ Harry hissed (not in Parseltongue, but it was a close thing), taking a step back from the fence. Merlin, he'd left his wand inside the house -- couldn't even summon a Patronus to call the Order -- "What are you  _ doing  _ here?"  _ How did you know where I lived? _

The Dark Lord only smiled more broadly, sipping from his mug. It smelled like good coffee, too, Harry despaired. "So combative this morning, Harry. I am merely taking a stroll about the yard with my morning coffee. Would you care for a cup?"

Harry nearly choked, thrown as he was by this whole interaction. "N-no, thank you," he managed to stammer, eyeing the mug all the while. "Erm. I need to get back to watering before the sun rises. Nice...seeing you."

With that, he turned back to the flowerbeds, spraying the last of the agapanthus, and began to roll up the hose to return it to the shed. The weight of Voldemort's gaze on his back as he did so was almost a physical one; as it were, Harry determinedly pushed all thoughts of the man's body into a corner of his mind from whence he hoped they would not return.

Of course, it couldn't end there. "That reminds me," the Dark wizard called to Harry's retreating back, "please inform your Aunt that I will happily attend tea this afternoon at the time she specified."

Bombshell dropped, he disappeared back into the house at Number Three, leaving Harry to stand, frozen, with coiled hose in hand, until Petunia shouted at him from the kitchen to come in and make breakfast.

_ Voldemort is coming for tea in the afternoon. _

Where the hell are the Order when Harry needs them?

The rest of the morning was full of the sort of dread that settled in Harry's stomach like sludge, leaving him nauseated and shaky. Petunia eyed him suspiciously over breakfast, informing him only then that she'd invited 'the new neighbor' for tea with her and Vernon at two, and that Harry was to set out the fine china, retrieve the loose tea from the pantry, and prepare the following foods...

It was still sinking in, while Harry exhausted himself cleaning the entire ground floor, that Voldemort  _ could get through the wards at all.  _ He wasn't going to try and understand just what the Dark Lord was playing at, or look too closely at why he hadn't simply been hexed the minute they were face-to-face, either; that way lay madness.

Instead, he detached a bit from reality and went about the motions of preparing the food and drink as he'd been told, watching his aunt and uncle work themselves into a tizzy over the prospect of getting to meet their new neighbor. If he ignored the likelihood of their impending deaths, it was really quite funny to think about. Voldemort. At tea.

He took especial care to arrange the garnish on the watercress sandwiches exactly as depicted in the cookbook's illustration, and was bringing the plate to the sitting room to join the rest of the tea spread when the doorbell rang. Petunia glared at Harry as she practically ran to answer it, dressed up in her Sunday best. Vernon lumbered into the sitting room just as Harry was returning to the kitchen, his thudding footsteps nearly loud enough to cover Petunia's cringingly fake, high voice at the door, and the (terribly charming) lower register of Voldemort's reply.

"...invitation was a pleasant surprise, Mrs. Dursley," he said as he crossed the threshold. Harry repressed a shudder at the honey-smooth tone; it was just shy of oily and uncomfortable, made worse by Harry's knowledge of just who the voice belonged to.

"Please, I must insist you call me Petunia," his aunt giggled --  _ giggled, _ someone save Harry from this nightmare -- "let me introduce you to my husband, Vernon..."

There was nothing left to bring from the kitchen until the kettle boiled. Harry leaned against the wall, face in his hands, and took several calming breaths. Voldemort was _ in the house. _ He was  _ charming the Dursleys _ and not in a magical way. If Harry was hearing the voices from the sitting room correctly, he'd just told them to call him  _ Tom. _

What was his life.

The kettle betrayed him after a few minutes, though, by whistling sharply in the kitchen. "--nephew will handle it," Petunia was saying, "he's a bit of an odd duck, just back from boarding school --"

"St. Brutus' Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys," Vernon chimed in, and Harry, currently pouring hot water into the fine teapot, stifled a snort. Here was the one person in Little Whinging that would never buy that shite in a second. And it was  _ Voldemort. _

Harry quickly blanked his expression into a politer smile, bringing the teapot into the sitting room. Voldemort had chosen the armchair that faced the doorway; he was dressed in an impeccable pale blue suit, one leg crossed elegantly over the other to bare a shapely ankle --

_ No, no, no, do _ not _ look at him.  _ Harry hastily averted his gaze to the table. "Good afternoon, sir," he managed to say, straightening up. Inadvertently, he locked eyes with Voldemort again, noticing that they were not nearly as red as they'd looked in the morning; indeed, they were more of a brown, with hints of maroon...

"Been teaching him better manners at St. Brutus'," Vernon grunted, nodding approvingly. "Told 'em not to be shy with the cane, this year, 'n it's worked wonders."

"Go on, then," Petunia waved a hand to dismiss Harry, still smiling. "You can go work in the garden to your heart's content. He's a bit slow," she said in an undertone, confiding. "The plants keep him busy in summers, keep him out of trouble..."

Harry didn't stay to hear the rest. He nodded once to the three adults and nearly fled the house. The blistering sun was orders of magnitude better than the looming threat of death just being in the same room as Voldemort.

Of course, being outside didn't mean he couldn't still hear the conversation indoors -- Harry tended the shrubs under the open front windows, listening for any signs of alarm within. As he weeded and trimmed the bushes, talk in the sitting room went from the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of the house --

"ah, yes, Mrs. Nelsen's nephew and I have been acquainted for some time; he offered a deal on the house I simply couldn't pass up --"

\-- to the Corvette --

"a remarkable design, the '62. I rarely admire the Americans, but -- "

\-- to the landscaping --

"English yew, yes, a personal favourite shrub of mine --"

\-- until finally, Voldemort was bidding the Dursleys farewell, citing a call he was expecting regarding some roofing work to be done on the house later on in the summer.

After he'd cleaned up the sitting room, Petunia sent Harry right back outside for the rest of the afternoon. Harry managed to sneak several watercress sandwiches out in the folds of his oversized shirt; he was leaning against the side of the house, bringing the first up to his mouth, when he looked up and spotted Voldemort leaning on the fence again, watching him.

"Don't hesitate on my account," the Dark Lord said. "Lord knows you've hardly eaten anything all day." His eyes crinkled, amused. "Lord Voldemort, that is."

Harry gaped at him. "...that was _ terrible," _ he said, but hell, it was still funny. "But, erm, yes, I'll just...eat..." he promptly fit one triangle of sandwich in his mouth, not making eye contact as he stuffed his face.

When he glanced up from the ground again, the last sandwich in his hand, Voldemort was giving him a conspiratorial look. "Really, though...some guardians, those Muggles. My condolences, Harry. Even an orphanage would be better than seeing those faces every day."

He sounded genuinely sympathetic. Harry snorted. "...Lord knows how I got here." A pause. "Lord Voldemort, that is."

The Dark Lord's choked laughter followed him back to the garden shed. When Harry returned to the front yard with the hedge clippers, the man was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Harry could not have anticipated the week that followed if he'd tried. He'd seen less surreal reruns of  _ The Twilight Zone _ on the Dursleys' television.

The morning after Voldemort's visit -- working title, The Dark Tea -- Harry emerged from Number Four into an awful, heavy haze of a morning, the kind of humidity that the sun would only make worse, and spotted the man leaning over the fence yet again. He had a mug of steaming, fragrant coffee in each hand; apparently, the offer from the day prior was not a mere pleasantry.

"Good morning, Voldemort," said Harry quietly, approaching the fence.

The Dark Lord smiled at the greeting, showing off his pearly white teeth in a manner that was simultaneously nonthreatening and intensely intimidating. "Good morning, Harry. Terrible weather we're having, isn't it?"

Sweat was already beading up at Harry's hairline. He could feel droplets on the back of his neck. "It is," he agreed, quite honestly. "I'll have to work on the garden once the sun goes down."

Why, exactly, was he contributing to this small talk?  _ Ah, right, I've got no one else to talk to. _ Sirius was the only person he'd regularly written to last summer. And he was...

Harry kept his face carefully blank while he processed the particular mix of emotions that train of thought inspired. Voldemort actually faltered, looking concerned, at the abrupt stillness in his posture. "...Harry?"

"I'm going to kill Bellatrix," Harry announced without preamble.

"Ah," the Dark Lord nodded understandingly. "All right, then. Coffee?"

Harry eyed the proffered mug. "This  _ could  _ be poisoned," he reasoned aloud. "And you don't care that I'll do it?"

"It isn't, though. Neither of them are," Voldemort illustrated his point by drinking from both mugs. "Frankly, if you manage to catch Bella with a Killing Curse, I'd be too impressed to complain."

"Yours could just be the antidote."

Voldemort took another sip of Harry's mug.

"... _ Mine _ could be the antidote."

This earned him an eye-roll. "You didn't consider poison on the mugs themselves," Voldemort pointed out.

Harry sighed and accepted the fuller of the two mugs. "I s'pose it's only neighborly at this point." He took a sip.

It was delicious, of course.

Once he accepted the coffee, it was only to be expected that the Dark Lord would show up again the next time outside, with something else in hand.

At sunset, tending the rear gardens: "Tea and crumpets, Harry?"

The following morning, when he'd already accepted more coffee: "Biscuits, Harry?"

Midday: "Sandwich, Harry?"

If you give a mouse a cookie, it'll ask for some milk. Letting Voldemort give  _ you  _ a cookie, apparently, led to not only milk but a plateful of tea cakes, butter and jam.

By the end of the week, Harry was eating about thrice as much food in their over-the-fence conversations as he was in the house. Petunia seemed pleased enough by his progress with the yard that she didn't bother assigning him to cooking. In retrospect, she might have been attempting to punish him by taking away his access to table scraps, but by that point, Harry didn't even notice.

When the Dursleys invited Voldemort over for tea again the following Sunday, he complimented Petunia on the state of her gardens, and inquired as to whether he might hire Harry on for his as well.

That was how Harry came to be employed at Number Three as a gardener, with pay going directly to the Dursleys.

"I have to ask," Harry finally spoke up while they took lunch in Number Three's newly-installed gazebo, "why  _ are  _ you bothering with me? Instead of, well, killing me now that you know I'm defenseless?"

"It's summer hols, Harry," the Dark Lord scoffed. "Even  _ I  _ take breaks."

"How Continental of you," Harry commented, eyebrow raised. The expression only lasted a second, between bites of the unfathomably delicious cottage pie they were having. "Vacation days."

"Britain could take a leaf out of Germany's book -- wizards there are  _ guaranteed  _ holiday of not one or two months, but  _ three months _ out of the year." Voldemort sipped at his glass of lemonade. "If I happen to cherry-pick the best features of every country I visit, well..."

"Can't be blamed," Harry agreed.

So July went on. It was really quite easy to fall into the new routine of waking up at Number Four, tending the Dursleys' flowerbeds before dawn, and crossing over into the gardens of Number Three to water the flowers with a cup of coffee in hand. (Voldemort had not questioned Harry's lack of sleep, for which he was thankful. It would be hard to explain the mix of nightmares and... other dreams... that he'd been experiencing of late.)

Breakfast with the Dark Lord at seven-thirty.

Tending whatever was needed with the gardens.

A mid-morning snack.

Then, when the sun was really beaming down, Voldemort insisted Harry come in for an extended lunch, where they both luxuriated in the (literal) magic of cooling charms. By this point, the Dursleys were being paid so handsomely for Harry's work that they overlooked his continued absence from the house and hired a housekeeper instead.

They would sit and talk about nothing in particular for an hour, and then Voldemort would go off and do whatever he did in his Corvette, and Harry would have a nap on the cool leather of the sitting room sofa, getting the majority of his sleep for the day.

Tea was whenever Harry woke up, usually two or three, and Harry returned outside between four and five to take care of whatever was left at Numbers Three or Four, little as there really was to do given Voldemort's landscaping style of choice -- trees made for self-sufficient gardening.

It was all rather too leisurely for Harry's liking, when it came down to it. He was... well, he was  _ used  _ to being worked to the bone, when he wasn't at Hogwarts. Eventually, he had to broach the subject, over a midafternoon snack of fruit and mixed nuts. "With everything planted and growing, there isn't really much to do."

Voldemort shrugged one elegant shoulder. He'd taken to wearing his shirts with the top two buttons undone, ostensibly due to the heat, but hadn't buttoned them back up when they were indoors either. "Then you have free time."

Harry struggled to explain his problem, drawn as his eyes were to the way the light played over his slightly protruding collarbones. "What am I supposed to use the free time  _ for _ , though?"

The Dark Lord lifted one (dark) eyebrow. "Ah, I see. You're not used to leisure much, are you, Harry? How... British." The corners of his eyes turned up in a disguised smirk.

At Harry's sheepish nod, however, he leaned back in his chair, eyeing Harry speculatively. "Have you finished your summer assignments, then?"

"Erm." Caught off-guard, Harry struggled to explain this problem, too. "The Dursleys have my trunk... locked away. In my cupboard. The cupboard under the stairs, I mean."

" 'Your cupboard'," Voldemort echoed thoughtfully under his breath, before dismissing the unspoken question with a small shake of his head. "You  _ have  _ an owl, do you not? Owl your friends for the list of summer assignments and use my library for the books, for now, then."

That was... a surprisingly neat solution, now Harry thought about it.

Hermione sounded terribly pleased to hear from him so early in the summer, in the long letter she sent with the assignments for their classes. The following afternoon, armed with the list, Harry crossed the threshold into Voldemort's study for the first time.

Here was the thing about Number Three, Privet Drive: it was much, much larger on the inside than the adjacent houses, despite being the same size. Voldemort apparently had a penchant for high ceilings and large open spaces: there was no room in the house with walls under ten feet tall. And the study (the  _ library _ , really, just as he'd called it) was no exception.

Harry took in the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall shelves; the chandelier overhead; the reading lamps and work tables strewn about the room; the fireplace in the center of the far wall, with a jar of Floo powder readily at hand; the overstuffed armchairs beside the hearth; all of this, in Slytherin colors and dark varnished woods, like a piece from a movie set.

"Sit wherever you like," Voldemort said from behind him. "Lord knows I've put more tables in than I need."

For once, it wasn't a lead-up to a pun.

This was the tipping point for Harry spending more time at Number Three than Number Four, indoors or out. Voldemort continued to ply Harry with food at regular intervals whenever he was present, which was now most of the time, and eventually wore Harry down enough on the subject of trying liquor that he now poured them both a nightcap in the evenings.

They worked more or less harmoniously in the library, Harry on schoolwork, Voldemort on whatever it was he was doing. If Harry grew interested in the strange artifacts and crumbling scrolls the Dark Lord had on his shelves and worktables, no one could really  _ blame  _ him for asking. And if the answers to his questions kept them awake late into the night in discussion, well, Harry didn't bother sleeping much at Number Four anyway.

It took him until late July to realize what he was doing, and another two days to voice the question aloud over dinner.

"Voldemort," Harry asked, "am I just living here at this point?"

The Dark Lord thought about it. "Yes, I think so," he answered. "You could use the guest room if you wanted to, instead of the sofa."

Tom Riddle finalized Harry's promotion to live-in housekeeper at tea that Sunday, with a substantial flat payment to the Dursleys for the 'inconvenience'. (They'd spoken of hiring a year-round gardener, even.) Harry had already packed up the scant few things he owned upstairs, and brought them down and one house over without much effort at all. As for his school things --

It was a bit embarrassing, when Harry thought about it, to let Voldemort see the inside of his cupboard, but he couldn't exactly shoo the man away while he retrieved the trunk and the trinkets he'd had to leave behind in there in the rush to move upstairs. The Dark Lord didn't comment on it while they were still at Number Four, but once he and Harry were back in the library...

"Harry," Voldemort murmured over a particularly old scroll, "did you live in the cupboard under the stairs?"

Harry bristled, despite himself. "It was a perfectly serviceable cupboard," he protested. "It wasn't like it didn't have a bed."

The Dark Lord glanced up at him over the scroll, and back again. "Hmm," he said, and offered no further comment.

"The point is I don't have to anymore," Harry huffed, a small smile working its way onto his face. "Thanks for that, by the way. I can't believe you paid the Dursleys that much."

"You'll find, Harry, that Muggle money is incredibly easy to counterfeit, even moreso with magic," Voldemort replied.


End file.
